Stoic Philosophy masking Hate

Stoicschool.org is the website of an organization that promotes itself as “a civil society of people from all walks of life who share important values about the earth, social justice, and making a real difference in the world through people and science.” These values, they say, are derived from their adherence to ancient Stoic philosophy and the application of it in the modern world. It’s an appealing message, and one that may appear to put ancient Greco-Roman philosophy to good use, until you look a little deeper into the site and find that this lofty and progressive vision is meant to disguise and give intellectual credibility to a hateful and regressive message that has nothing to do with Stoicism.

A racist and nationalist article entitled “Coexistence failures for 250 years” claiming that “The United States has documented almost 250 years of bending over backwards to make other races happy.” It argues that “the West” should recognize that it is locked in “a racist culture war” with “ungrateful” “Indian Tribes,” “African Americans,” and “Arab Muslims” who “hate Western races or values or culture” and “must be sent back to their countries of origin that they seem to love so much.” “Listen to rap music and black lives matter protesters,” it warns, “and you will understand that they are fighting a racist culture war against the West.” This piece ends with a quotation from the film Gladiator: “people should know when they’re conquered.”

A comparison of the rallies of “community organizers” (which is a veiled reference to those who advocate racial, economic, and other forms of equality) to children “disobey[ing their] parents and play[ing] in the street” because “they have trained themselves to not count their blessings.” They are, according to the site, “biting the hand that feeds [them]…even dogs are not so stupid.”

A xenophobic and racist series on the United States’ founding documents that describes as “enlightenment fallacies” the Declaration of Independence’s claim that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are “unalienable rights” for all human beings. The site argues that “the Constitution is for European people who did the hard work of settling America, not for foreigners or immigrants no matter how wretched they are or how much merit they seem to have” and that “We the people…” at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence should be understood to mean “Dear former Europeans.” The “American Dream,” the article claims, “never has had anything to do with becoming the world’s emergency room for every refugee that finds himself in an abusive relationship with his government.”

A misogynist and transphobic discussion of gender identity that indulges in gross caricatures of the goals of the feminist movement: “Perhaps the biggest difference in the nature of Western women and men is that Western women want to be more like men.” The site claims that feminism is the belief that women and men are the same, which they snidely “refute” with evidence like “Statistically, females carry 100% of human babies” or “For some reason, double-blinded studies of many nations indicate that nearly 100% of Tampons are bought for women.” They contemptuously misrepresent the movement, which claims not that men and women are the same, but that everyone (whether they identify as male, female, non-binary, non-conforming) deserves the same opportunities, resources, and rewards for achievement.

The front page of the site displays an Islamophobic quote from the “Scholarch” of the organization: “One culture sees women and thinks of FGM [female genital mutilation] and burkas. They are eager to fight to acquire many wives. The West sees women and thinks of a beautiful flower that should be glorified.” This claim paints all Muslims as patriarchal, a similar rhetorical move to those whopaint all Muslims as terrorists, which is also a view articulated on Stoicschool.org: “Since 1986, Muslims who imitate Muhammad’s life have been celebrating serial killers who use vehicles and knives.” The description of women as “beautiful flower[s] that should be glorified” is itself misogynist, an example of “benevolent sexism” that represents women as weak creatures needing protection in order to authorize giving men power over them.

These articles make few references to any recognizable tenets of Stoicism beyond vague invocations of “virtue,” “gratitude,” and “temperance,” and authors’ pseudonyms taken from ancient Stoic philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius,Seneca, and Cicero (this last of questionable allegiance to Stoicism). Nevertheless the site’s contributors represent themselves not just as modern adopters of Stoicism but as the direct and specially authorized intellectual descendants of the ancient Stoics. “We are,” the site claims, “the oldest continuous institution in history” and possess “a continuous record of our activities from our founding until today.” The site traces its lineage through a series of “Scholarchs” who “receive the office directly from the previous Scholoarch [sic] in a formal ceremony.” The first several of these leaders, according to Stoicschool.org’s “history” page, are those who are known to have been associated with Zeno’s school in Athens: Zeno himself, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and so on. The administrator of Stoicschool.org is, presumably, the 124th “Scholarch” listed in the history as being appointed in 2003, but no name is given. In fact, none of the names of Scholarchs are given in the site’s history after Sextus of Chaerona [sic; the place Sextus was from is spelled Chaeronea] supposedly took the office in 154 CE.

Defending Western Civilization" is code that white supremacists use to disguise their hateful agenda

In general the site’s grasp of ancient history seems shaky: it claims “the Stoic School knows these ancient ways because we witnessed the birth of Western civilization, and we have been its mentor, tutor, and champion ever since,” but makes no reference to anything before the time of Zeno (~300 BCE), which means that they do not consider Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle (to speak only of philosophers) to have been part of “Western Civilization.” Some of the names chosen by contributors also fit uneasily with the history of Stoicism. The Islamaphobe goes by the name “Cato the Elder,” but it was Cato the Younger who was known as a Stoic, not his great grandfather (the author apparently prefers to be able to end his posts with imitations of Cato the Elder’s “Carthage must be destroyed,” e.g. “Sharia must be destroyed,” rather than to be historically accurate).

According to Stoicschool.org the Statue of Liberty is "a monument to an early attempt to destroy Western values"

The sinister dimensions of such promotion of “Western Civilization” are evident in various places on the site. When they write that “Western Civilization is the best way of life…and is…the only way for people of all races to live in peace on earth” it should not be understood as an inclusive message: elsewhere “Diversity” is listed as one of “six tactics” that “Eastern cultures” are using in a “conscious strategy to destroy Western Civilization.” Rather the site employs the language of purity in a gesture to white supremacy (“pure Western civilization is a blessing to all people who deal with it whether they are part of the West or not”) and declares its imperialist, even potentially genocidal, intent to “preserve the best and replace the rest regarding the West.”